BLACK SERIES 3.75″ DEATH TROOPER REVIEW

We start Black Series week with a closer look at the 3.75″ Death Trooper by way of a community review by photographer and Instagrammer Devon Green @themightyempire. This is a great place to get better acquainted with one of the best smaller scale Black Series figures thanks to an impressive gallery of images and thorough graded review.

Review by Devon Green@themightyempire

If you’re a collector of Star Wars figures in the 1:18 scale, these past few years haven’t been too kind to you. 3.75inch figures have become somewhat of an afterthought in the eyes of Hasbro as their main focus has pushed more to their 6inch black series line. The 3.75in figures they have been putting out have been somewhat lackluster, with their 5 point of articulation figures. If you’re able to make it to a Wal-Mart, you may just be lucky enough to grab some of their Black Series 3.75inch super articulated figures.

If you’re REALLY lucky, you might be able to mine through the mountains of left over Finn and General Leia figures and strike gold with the new Rogue One Death Trooper figure. If you’ve been upset with Hasbro’s figure quality over the past few years, the Death Trooper might just help you restore your faith.

This Death trooper figure boasts a movie accurate likeness to the ones you’ll see on the screen in Rogue One. This figure’s helmet is wonderfully sculpted, especially in this smaller scale. His armor is dressed with a pauldron, different sorts of pouches, explosives and different textures that is very fitting with an Imperial Trooper. His pauldron connects with his harness and grenade belt, which is removable. I prefer the look of his pauldron being on.

He feels a bit naked without it, and it shows how skinny the figure is. That might be my only gripe about the sculpt is how skinny it is. The arms, legs, and torso are slim, which doesn’t make him as menacing as he could be. (Still pretty damn intimidating though.) What makes up for the figures sleek physique is his height. He towers over nearly every other 3.75 inch figure.

The paint application is pretty hard to mess up on this figure. The trooper itself is all black with a some silver and a dash of green in the helmet. The paint itself has a nice black glossy shine to it that are accurate to the troopers in the movie. I wish the green on his eye piece and pulse emitters would pop just a little brighter. I also wish they used a different black for the body suit underneath the armor, just to help differentiate them a bit. Otherwise a solid paint job all around. All the colors are where they’re supposed to be. (All 3 of them.)

If you’re lucky to find this figure at Walmart at the time I’m typing this, you can find him for around $5-$6 USD as that’s the current sale price of 3.75in Black Series figures. That’s an amazing deal for this figure. However, I’ve only been lucky to find two of these figures in the wild, and I paid full price for them at about $12.99 USD. In my opinion, for the quality of the figure, that’s not a terrible price, but somewhere in the $10 range would’ve been perfect. The Ebay and Amazon prices can be anywhere from $16-$20 USD. I personally wouldn’t want to pay that much for a figure, but if you really want this figure, I don’t think you’d be terribly disappointed even if you did pay that price.

This figure really shines when it comes to articulation. With about 14 (That I counted) points of articulation, you can really get his figure into some great poses. You can easily make the figure hold his blaster rifle and actually have him look down the barrel of the blaster to make it look like he’s aiming. Some figures may have the articulation, but have limited movement in the arms. (Looking at you, Black Series First Order Stormtrooper, but that’s a review for another day.) Thankfully the shoulder pauldron doesn’t limit the movement of the figure’s right arm. The ball jointed hips really let the figure get into some great stances. This figures points of articulation are: Ball socket head, ball jointed shoulders, jointed elbows, ball jointed wrists, ball jointed torso, ball jointed hips, ball jointed knees, and ball jointed ankles. With articulation it’s easy to see why this would be such a great figure.

If it doesn’t seem like I’ve made my point in the 5 paragraphs before this one, I’ll make it now. I love this figure. Any gripe I have about it are very little and not really enough to downsize how I feel about it. It shows that with these rough few years we’ve gotten with Hasbro releases, they can still knock it out of the park if they put the effort into it. The only really negative to this figure is that you’ll have a hard time finding it. Whether it be because of poor distribution or scalpers, this guy won’t stay on the shelves long enough to meet the demands. It won’t meet my demands because I’d love about 10 more of these. This doesn’t really have much to do with the figure itself, I just wish they would be more available, and not only exclusive to Walmart.

If you can find it, you’ll find a well-rounded figure that has a beautiful design, excellent paint job and some of the best articulation we’ve seen in years on a 3.75inch Star Wars figure. Above all that, the figure just looks damn cool. I was instantly in love with the design of the troopers when the screen caps were first released online, and I’m very impressed with how it was translated into this scale of action figure. Whether you’re a collector, photographer or just a fan of Star Wars, buy this figure. You’ll be very pleased you did.

We finish our first ranked review with a near perfect score of 45/50 and a huge thank you goes to community reviewer Devon Green for lending his thoughts on this impressive figure. Be sure to head over to Devon’s Instagram @themightyempire for more incredible shoots like this!

The Exclu Collective is the signature showcasing platform for the creative toy community. We are a team of 11 international creatives who are all, one way or another, embedded within the flourishing toy photography space where art meets popular culture on an expansive scale. We are uniquely positioned to connect the vast toy industry to those most engaged by way of exclusive photography shoots, figure reviews and previews, event news, exclusive interviews and community competitions